Pitching injuries

[Michael W]

Attached is a list of all the pitchers who have been injured since Fetter joined in the 2020-21 off-season, and how many times each.

Overall it's 47 pitchers, 63 stints on the 10 or 15 day IL, and 35 on the 60-day.

A few notes

1) I've not included players going on a minor league IL  Several of the guys listed would show additional stints.

2) When a player ends the season on the 60-day and starts the next season on the 60-day, technically he is activated and then goes on the list again.  In such cases, I removed the duplicate and didn't count that twice.

3) Sometimes players are transferred from the 10-day to the 60-day - in those cases both are counted below.   

4) I think Paul Sewald joined the team already on the IL, so you could take him out.

5) I did this manually from EPSN data, which seemed a bit noisy to begin with, so my apologies for any errors.

[Roger King]

I have no idea how this compares to other teams - whether as fans we should be alarmed or this is the norm.  Anecdotally, here in Toronto, the Jays this year had an entire starting staff on the DL at one point: Bieber, Scherzer, Yesavage, Berrios, Ponce, Francis… Plus a couple of key relievers.

In general, it seems like there are more elite pitchers than ever in MLB - and some pretty remarkable stats to go along with it - but that seems to be coming with a price.

Roger King
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[Michael W]

Well, if everyone on the list did one team, we could figure that out pretty quick.  All the data is on ESPN under the team transactions.  Roger, you could start with the Jays.

Michael

[Roger King]

How about I start with Google AI instead? :-)

The Los Angeles Dodgers have suffered the most pitching injuries in Major League Baseball over the last five years. According to data tracking from 2021 through the ongoing 2026 season, the franchise recorded nearly 100 separate Injured List (IL) stints for pitchers alone and routinely leads the league in total player days lost to injury. [1, 2, 3]

Other franchises hit uniquely hard by pitching-specific epidemics in this timeframe include the New York Yankees, Houston Astros, and Toronto Blue Jays. [1, 2, 3]

The Hardest-Hit Teams (2021–2026)

• Los Angeles Dodgers: The undeniable epicenter of the MLB pitching injury crisis. Between 2021 and 2025, they paced the league in pitching IL placements. Their historical workloads have seen an entire elite rotation's worth of star power—including Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Dustin May, and Tony Gonsolin—sidelined at overlapping intervals. They continue to lead all of MLB with 14 players currently on the IL in 2026. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• Houston Astros: Houston has faced an extreme concentration of severe arm injuries to its starting depth. In recent seasons, they have repeatedly tied or led the league in active elbow-related injuries, losing foundational rotation pieces like Cristian Javier, José Urquidy, Luis Garcia, and Lance McCullers Jr. to long-term surgeries. [1, 2]
• New York Yankees: The Yankees have routinely placed near the top of Spotrac's Cumulative Injury Tracker. High-profile pitchers like Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Luis Severino, and Nestor Cortes have all missed significant multi-month stretches over the past several seasons. [1, 2]
• Toronto Blue Jays & Detroit Tigers: According to RotoWire's Injury Severity Score tracking, these two American League clubs rank remarkably high in total days and roster value lost. The Blue Jays, in particular, have been devastated by early-season pitching casualties in 2026, including a stress fracture to José Berríos and elbow inflammation to Shane Bieber

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[Tapu Shaikh]

AI: stealing our jobs

On 5/23/26 23:03, Roger King wrote:

How about I start with Google AI instead? :-)

On Sat, May 23, 2026 at 4:15 PM Michael W <miw...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Peter Welch]

Dodgers chew up arms but they steadily churn out pitching prospects or trade prospects for established pitchers or sign free agent pitchers with their huge budget.  They usually have a deep farm system. 

One of their veteran pitchers, Blake Snell, gets hurt all the time but always seems to bounce back and be effective. Snell's latest injury is needing the same elbow surgery as Skubal.  Snell was injured earlier this season as usual.

Trying to throw a baseball 95+ mph with heavy spin is just hard on the human body no matter how strong or flexible you are.

Having pitchers come out of the gate maximizing velocity and spin is putting a lot of stress on their arms.  Lower pitch count limits don't necessarily produce healthier pitchers because they try to max out their velocity and spin in shorter stints.

We are seeing see so many pitcher injuries, but pitchers have always been getting injured.  It's the nature of the beast.

Peter

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From: detroit...@googlegroups.com <detroit...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Roger King <pnag...@pnagency.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2026 5:03 PM
To: Michael W <miw...@gmail.com>
Cc: Detroit Tigers e-mail list <detroit...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Pitching injuries

 

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[Michael W]

> AI stealing our jobs.

:-) that’s pretty funny.

Honestly though, when I’ve used Gemini for sports stats, it’s basically never right.  It can’t do arithmetic, even counting or “greater/lesser”, reliably in the main engine, and it’s still not consistent at assembling data from sources and farming it out to the math engine.

In the response that Roger posted, it’s conflating articles complaining about injuries with one set of stats from 2026 only.  Basically junk if you are hoping for a precise answer.

In the next couple years AI will probably be able to answer this kind of question, but not yet.

Michael feed

[Peter Welch]

What's interesting about the Tigers under Fetter/Hinch is that their emphasis is not so much on pure velocity but on keeping the ball down in the zone with splitters/sinkers/cutters/sliders and "controlling the zone" by limiting walks.  Skubal is an exception, but he's just a freak athlete who can throw 100-mph when he wants and has a multi-weapon arsenal of pitches, although Skubal is at his best when he's keeping the ball down in the zone and using his change-up.  Sometimes when he goes up in the zone with his heater he can get hit hard.

But generally the Tigers' pitching gurus haven't really emphasized velocity.  Just look at our bullpen in recent years and the type of pitchers Harris usually acquires.

So I don't think necessarily you can blame the Tigers' pitcher injuries on having them try to throw harder.  Perhaps emphasizing splitters/cutters/sinkers with increased spin and spin shapes puts stress on our pitchers' arms.  I know in the past the splitter has been blamed for arm injuries.

Or, maybe it's simply bad luck.  Pitchers always get hurt, and we have more than our share.

Peter

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From: detroit...@googlegroups.com <detroit...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Michael W <miw...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2026 3:13 PM
To: Detroit Tigers e-mail list <detroit...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Pitching injuries

 

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[Peter Welch]

Speaking of Blake Snell, he just had the same "experimental" procedure that Tarik Skubal had on his elbow.  Recovery time is supposed to be much shorter than traditional arthroscopy.

https://www.sportsgrid.com/mlb/article/dodgers39-blake-snell-to-undergo-elbow-surgery-tuesday

Peter

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From: detroit...@googlegroups.com <detroit...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Peter Welch <pw...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2026 7:07 PM
To: detroit...@googlegroups.com <detroit...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Pitching injuries

 

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